Up until now, we’ve had to restrict purchases of the Raspberry Pi to one per customer because the demand has been (and continues to be) so high. Both of our manufacturing partners have been working at building capacity so you we can lift that limit – right now, 4000 Raspberry Pis are being made every day. As of this morning, you’ll be able to buy as many Raspberry Pis as you want from both RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell. (See below for ordering instructions.)

This is of special importance to those of you who are using the Raspberry Pi in your businesses, and to people looking to buy classroom sets for schools and universities. And if you’ve been waiting for the Raspberry Pi to be in general delivery before you order, now’s the time to get your order in; it helps us to plan the supply chain efficiently if we have a bit of visibility of what’s just down the road.

Jo from RS says:

We’re delighted to announce that as of 08.30am BST on 16th July, RS and Allied are now taking general orders for Raspberry Pi. Orders can be placed by visiting http://pi.rsdelivers.com.

This means that customers worldwide can now order multiple quantities of the Raspberry Pi Model B board, along with the associated accessories, including SD cards pre-loaded with the latest Raspberry Pi operating system and Raspberry Pi cases for safer storage. Customers will be provided with a forecast future delivery date when placing their order, and these orders will be fulfilled after all orders placed before 16th July have been shipped.

We’ve opened up the RS and Allied websites so that businesses, engineering professionals and educational institutions can now place their Raspberry Pi order through our usual business-to-business channels. Anyone who wants to buy the Raspberry Pi for personal use will be directed to the Pi Store to make their purchase.

While existing orders for Raspberry Pi will continue to be fulfilled through the next few months, the ramp-up of production has enabled us to lift the restrictions on the number of units per customer. Orders can now be placed for unlimited quantities of Raspberry Pi board and accessories without the need to register or to receive an invitation to order. We’re currently forecasting that these orders will start reaching customers by the end of September.

The Raspberry Pi boards from RS and Allied are priced at £21.60, plus tax, shipping charges and import duty as applicable.

Jenny from Farnell says:

element14 are pleased to announce that we will now be taking volume orders for Raspberry Pi Model B, on an expected delivery lead-time of 4-6 weeks, as our order backlog improves and our production capacity continues to increase.

Anyone wishing to purchase 10 or more Raspberry Pi’s should email rpiquotes@element14.com for the very latest delivery information.

These orders will be serviced and delivered in the date order that they’re taken, and will not impact any deliveries already committed to other customers.

A quick update from RS. We’re just working through the final webpage process into our live sites this morning. It’s taking slightly longer than planned, so please bear with us while we get everything in place. More soon!

Mike, whilst you’re here, can you explain why RS seems to have such a long waiting time compared to Farnell?
I ordered from you both in mid March. RS have only just asked for my card details a few weeks ago, and I believe I still have a month to wait before I’m likely to see the board, yet the Farnell RPi has been in my possession for almost a month.

Hmm, tried RS selling site – estimated despatch 11 weeks. Plus some time for delivery. Doesn’t sound like much of the improvement. If you are making so much Pi every day, I would expect much shorter despatch time.

We’re making a lot of units, and people are buying a lot of units. The key point is that you no longer need to register your interest and then be invited to purchase; the Pi is now just a regular product, albeit with a significant lead time.

Ok, thanks for clarification. I originaly thought that making it generaly order-able means that there will be common despatch and delivery times. So only way of ordering changed, but we still have to wait quite long. Is there any estimation where this could improve too? Thanks.

Quite obviously, the lead time can only significantly reduce once the pent-up demand has been satisfied and the suppliers can build up a stock in their warehouses.
Right now they are shipping them to customers the moment they get built, so there’s simply none sat on the warehouse shelves.

That’s just the way it goes with popular products.

Estimations of when they can build up a stock are pretty much all bogus until they have some idea of the bulk orders people are placing.
Even then they will probably keep their predictions private because nobody wants to make a public statement until they are *very* sure of it – because those same people complaining that they don’t have those predictions will be the first to scream about it being wrong.

(Note that predictions are *usually* wrong, the only thing that changes is how wrong they are.)

I am still waiting on my PI (April 3 from Farnell) and first it was “end of June” and when I emailed them asking what was happening they said “Your order will be despatched no later than the 5th of July”.

Same here. The last (of a line) of shipping dates Farnell gave me was 9th July and still nothing and no communication. I dont mind waiting but I think someone along the line needs to rein in the PR machine a little until 3 month old orders are actually being honoured by the suppliers.

Yep, I’m in the exact same situation as well (with matching order and dispatch dates). The promised updates by mail from the 9th of July haven’t arrived yet. Currently I’m awaiting response from them to the mail I’ve sent earlier today.
The waiting time is close to unbearable :) (mainly because of the constant delays)

Same issue here. RS have been pretty terrible with communication. Element14/Farnell seem a lot more behind the project, with their own dedicated guides and site. RS just dont seem to care at all. Not that I’m surprised. Anyone will tell you that this is the way they have always been and seem to hate dealing with customers directly.

Yup, this is the same with my experience. Farnell is probably the worst vendor I’ve ever worked with. I will never do business with them again, and I intend to make it clear to all my embedded developer friends that they should stay lightyears away from Farnell.

I gave up on getting a Pi from them. Literally, I canceled my order with them because of their poor customer service. It’s a shame that the Pi is being negatively impacted by a really bad distributor. By the time they finally figure it out and stop allowing Farnell to distribute the Pi, the damage may already have been irreparable.

i ordered in April, and only this past week did i receive any email regarding my pi. its been shipped, but i wonder when it’ll arrive. I am leaving the country soon, so i won’t have time to tinker with it.

I placed an expression of interest with RS a long time ago and have heard absolutely nothing from them. Farnell took my expression of interest, moved through to order and delivered on 24th May. Good customer service Farnell – you will receive my volume order today.

I am envious you have three while many of us await an invitation to order one. :( But, good for you :)

Seriously though, if you can/will spare one of your Raspis, I will be happy to buy it from you as a birthday present for a kid that turns 9 in the next couple of weeks. That kid just can’t wait to have his hands on one: he specifically wants to use Scratch and build games.

Yes, I understand that invitations are no longer needed. Given that the wait times haven’t changed much (as of now), I am appealing to people who already have multiple Raspis to see if they will sell me a unit they aren’t using. Worth trying I think. :)

If that’s the case (see what I did there) then I’m a bit disappointed. I don’t mind spending around £4 on a case but at £9 – £10 then its like 1/3rd of the price of the Pi and it doesn’t appear to be good value. I think a trip to Maplin is in order or I may wait and see what Farnell come up with.

I am sure this is good news for a lot of people and organisations, including the educational sector, but it does come as a bit of a ‘slap in the face’ for customers who first expressed an interest with RS the first week in March, and who still have not received their RasPi.
Farnell/Element14 do IMHO appear to have done better so far though, by quite a few weeks.
Still, as the old saying goes “Everything comes to those who wait”… let’s hope so anyway!

Great news.
Just noticed about RS’ cases. They look really good and a very nice price too. When will these cases be available at local RS delegations, so we can avoid shipping charges?
Right now, I’ve got this price:
Goods total 5.06€
Tax 1.01€
Standard Delivery (Despatch expected within 11 week(s)) 6.28€
Order Total 12.35€

Bit [mod edit for language] to be honest, signed up to register my interest, got a bunch of emails every couple of weeks saying “hold on, we’re building more to meet supply” and that was it… Now, i can order, but have to wait 11 weeks… [Mod edit again for language, and also to suggest you read the lead times in the post.]

Does anyone have Farnell’s _working_ contact email?
They have sended my RPi which I ordered in May to the wrong address.
I have sended them a e-mail to export at farnell.com on July 12 but there is no reply yet.

Good news, but will there be a mechanism to stop someone ordering thousands and reselling them at a profit to people who wouldn’t be waiting for their order if there weren’t people buying large lots to sell to them?

Won’t there still have to be rationing or at least conditions attached to non-school large purchase orders?

This is completely the wrong idea. Yes, it might make sense from a bottom line standpoint, but allowing businesses with lots of money to purchase multiple units undermines the original intent of the device: to foster a curiosity in programming for those who otherwise could not afford a computer. One order per person was the best way to achieve a high distribution. This policy shift does not mean more people will get RasPis in their hands. I just means a select few will get their hands on a lot of them, just as it is with money, land, and any other form of wealth.

This has nothing at all to do with bottom line. The production is now at a point where it can handle the demand (we think), so anyone who wants to buy a Pi can do so. The distribution to all and sundry is going pretty well, with 200k now in the field. Unlike land or property, there is little reason to buy a huge number of Raspi’s – prices are not at a level where you make little or no profit (or will be buy the time bulk orders are delivered) – they are not an investment for monetary gain.

@RS: I understand the huge amounts of orders take alot of time and so on but is there any talks about taking in temporary staff?

*scratch ear* so if I order/pay one from e14 now it will arrive before the one I paid for from RS six weeks ago. (fourteen weeks wait for those that paid when I did)
I was going to use the Pi to handle greenhouse lights and waterpump, anyone got any suggestions what I can use a second one for?
(looking for geeky impress-value rather than irl-app)

I registered my interest at RS in April and my RPi is expected to be despatched in 7 weeks, but if I buy one now from Farnell/element14 it is only expected to be 5 weeks. Does RS have so many more people on their waiting list or is there something else that has happened to slow them down? Personally, I’m ok with 2 extra weeks as long as i get my Pi, but it feels like those who have been in line should get their first…

This is dodgy news. I keep trying my Element 13 invite I got on July 3rd. I get the message: “we are currently experiencing a huge number of requests and are temporarily unable to take your order.”
How can they be taking bulk orders now when they can not even fulfill my 1 order?
I now assume this part is rubbish: “Please try the link in your email again later, we still have your place in line.”

Well, a lot of other people (200k in fact) have managed to get orders in and get the product, so I’m not sure what the problem can be with your particular order. Notwithstanding any issues as you describe, people buying now will still be in the queue behind you.

If you are in the US, recommend you order from alliedelec.com (RS’ US company) at:http://www.alliedelec.com/lp/120626raso/
Prices are in $US. As mentioned above they have been accepting quantity orders for at least a few weeks now.

@pithonica, my colleague ordered two from the page I linked early last week. It accepted the order for quantity 2. He did not see the text with the one per customer limit. FWIW I still await the pi I ordered from Farnell on 29 Feb.

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes cap, the timing of this announcement might suggest that there is a slight possibility that duplicate orders by some are being abandoned at an increasing rate, freeing up some supply. Another possibility is that orders are going unfilled by many who jumped on The Next Thing Bandwagon and were swept up in the early frenzy to get a Pi just because everyone else seemed to want one without having the foggiest notion of what to do with it. Still others who made the leap in order to immediately triple their money on ePrey, etc., are now dropping out as supplies are finally meeting the actual demand, eliminating the profit potential (prices on ePrey are dropping from over $100 last week to around $60 this week).

BTW, for those who think there are ~200,000 Pi boards in the field, that’s off, possibly by a lot. Newark is only now starting to deliver to customers in the U.S. their allotment of the 100,000 built in June, which is probably somewhere in the tens of thousands range, since the first few hundred thousand orders/registrations of interest were primarily from the UK and some European countries. I would take the distributors’ “delivered” numbers and trim them by at least 30% on any given day until the backlog is truly filled.

On the other hand, we have five fingers, and they will be busy putting in bulk orders for U.S. educational institutions that are very interested in acquiring the Pi but, so far, have been hard-pressed to even see one. A lucky few educators and students who were able to order and actually receive one aren’t able to provide the exposure needed to get the word out about what they think they can do with it, as well as their less bleeding-edge, not-so-early adopter fellow teachers and students. The only reason any bulk orders will occur now is because the new school year is a bit over a month away and this is the last opportunity to spend Fiscal Year 2012 money for many local, county/city, state, and federal government agencies. Those orders won’t be overwhelming, though, because so few educators and their technology folks have been able to test drive a Pi. We can hope that there will be many more orders in the hopper before this time next year in advance of the 2013 – 2014 school year.

We’ll be holding what I believe will be the first Raspberry Jam in the U.S. this coming Saturday, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California (just a few blocks from the Googleplex, so, bring your cameras for photos with the new Jelly Bean Android mascot! :) ). We hope that will help expose an influential group of extreme early adopters in both education and business here and help bootstrap more interest in the Pi, especially to inspire new software and hardware projects by students that will help them learn computing fundamentals.

Ironically, some of the worst school districts in the U.S. are intermingled among the gleaming skyscrapers that silicon and software built here in the SF Bay area, and the Pi could help change that status quo precisely because of its price point and wide support thanks, in no small part, to the amazing community that’s sprouting like weeds, at least on-line so far. The success of the Jams in the UK is a positive sign that The Best is Yet to Come, though.

At least now we can order The Best in Bulk … Delivery in Bulk Real Soon Now? Well, you can’t have everything, can you? :D

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes cap, the timing of this announcement might suggest that there is a slight possibility that duplicate orders by some are being abandoned at an increasing rate, freeing up some supply.

Cancellation/abandonment of dupe orders that were _never_ going to be purchased is a _good_ thing – it moves people toward the end of the queue up! By definition, the canceled/abandoned number could be as high as 50% of all duplicate orders and we all know that there were a large number of those simply because there were two distributors not coordinating lists, and they each had partners/subsidiaries around the world who weren’t coordinating their lists, as evidenced by statements right here in the above comments and in the forums, and the number appearing on ePrey, etc. Thankfully, it looks like the number’s not anywhere near 50%, but, it’s certainly well above zero, as you undoubtedly know.

Plus, people hopping on the bandwagon who had no idea what Linux is and _never_ had any intention of becoming involved with the education mission only mucked up things for the people who were truly interested in the mission and have been champing at the bit to participate. When the novelty wore off after probably just a few days, those people certainly were never going to complete their orders. Those that did complete orders are just a source of complaints waiting to happen because of completely warped expectations.

It would be extremely nice to get some real distribution data for once, such as the number of boards shipped by postal code. I’m trying my damnedest to help promote the mission, and the only thing I know is that there are only about 50 RasTrack pins within 100 miles of my location. I have no way to reliably broadcast to them (or the hundreds, or maybe even thousands of others who may be Out There) except on this site, which many in my vicinity apparently don’t monitor. Send the data back-channel to the Jam organizers under the threat of a wicked spell, if anyone thinks there’s a shred of usefulness in that data to competitors, of which there really aren’t any at the price point of the Pi. If you want to parse it out by region to limit the big picture to those outside the Foundation, but don’t have the resources, give it to me and I’ll do it, and I avoid wicked spells at all costs!

People will come to conclusions you didn’t intend when there’s no definitive information provided as an alternative.

Eben – I’m not calling you a liar, I specifically called out the distributors’ numbers, on which you obviously are completely dependent like anyone else. One of my many jobs long ago was as an independent auditor. We don’t need to waste any time with it, but, it’s the only way to get to the truth if you’re truly interested in it. Get _all_ of the shipping _delivery_ confirmations (otherwise, they get to cherry-pick) based on tracking numbers, contact a meaningful sample (10,000+) of the recipients (geographically and temporally spread), and verify that they received their orders. They may have _made_ 200,000, but, that’s not the same as having _delivered_ that many. Surveys out here in Silicon Valley show there are not thousands, much less tens of thousands, _delivered_ to buyers, and I stand by that. There are some scheduled to be delivered this week, but, that’s not delivered _yet_.

You folks had bad experiences with the Wintel monopoly – a lot of us did, and don’t mistake Us for Them. We had nothing to do with their shenanigans and I’ve made that abundantly clear here and in the forums, much to the chagrin of only one of the mods. You’re biting the hand … well, you know the rest.

Jim, you are inventing conspiracies where none exist, and questioning figures there is no need to question. Clue: We don’t *need* to believe the distributors figures (although we do), as we know the number of 2835’s sold (you do know Eben and I work for Broadcom?)……..also, the vast majority of boards have been delivered in the UK……so any Stateside figures are going to skew your results.

quote ..also, the vast majority of boards have been delivered in the UK…
Do we know why? I can’t believe either RS or E14 have a policy of supplying UK orders first – it would be too hard to sort their queues in that way, and wouldn’t gain them anything. And I don’t think the US is that much less interested in R-Pi than the UK, judging by what I’ve seen on the forum.

James – you and I have our differences of opinions, but, you really need to read more carefully and stop looking for people to be inventing conspiracies – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they _are_ out to get you (but, sometimes they are, it’s wisdom that makes the difference). If, and only if, you very carefully read where I specifically differentiated between “_made_” and “_delivered_”, will you understand my point.

You should know as well as anyone that _ordering_ parts from Broadcom precedes final assembly of boards by a month, or more, and then there’s upwards of additional weeks between assembly and _delivery_ to buyers (aka the people actually paying for all of this now – we’re long past founders having their homes mortgaged, so, the associated entitlement-to-have-a-chip-on-ones-shoulder attitude really needs to be abandoned once-and-for-all).

As I said earlier in the genesis of the original comment, it would be extremely useful to those of us trying very hard to organize local support groups to have some clue as to how many boards have been _delivered_ to our areas. Note the key words “trying very hard” and “local support”, something that seems to be forgotten all-too-often by the paranoid types, whomever they may be. I would be more than happy to hear a counter-argument as to why we can’t get some help in this regard, and I even volunteered to slice-and-dice the data, if no one else has the time. I’m not asking for personally-identifiable data, just how many boards have been _delivered_ where, for starters. Being able to submit messaging to be disseminated to the mailing list would be fantastic (since I don’t expect to receive the list itself), especially if there is any geographic slicing that can be done at least by country code.

All I’m asking is to be met just 10% of the way, not even anywhere near halfway. It shouldn’t be this hard to help promote the great idea that is the Pi.

Andy – there is an extreme skew in the order in which various geographic areas were able to pre-order/register interest on launch day, and even for days later. Very few people outside the UK could get to the RS or Farnell sites and, even if one did, they required an address in the UK, initially. Their partners in the US (and I suspect elsewhere, especially outside Europe) didn’t even provide the ability to pre-order/register on their sites for more than a day after the launch, and then they were swamped for days. It’s been so long since launch day that I’ll bet that most of the people who jumped on the bandwagon without really knowing anything about Linux or the educational purpose of the Pi have completely forgotten about the Pi. I am noticing a distinct lack of interest by the media outside the UK beyond occasional parroting of the reports coming out of Cambridge. Without that interest, there is no way for potentially-interested US customers to be notified of what’s going on outside this site. It appears that very few in the U.S. are following this site, especially in Silicon Valley where I am. That might be due to this being the peak of the Summer vacation period. If significant numbers of Pi boards do finally show up here (and people return from vacation), we hope that will regenerate interest.

“Get _all_ of the shipping _delivery_ confirmations (otherwise, they get to cherry-pick) based on tracking numbers”
For data-protection reasons, the distributors will be unable to provide that information to the RPi Foundation. Only thing they could do would be provide aggregate anonymised statistics, which I suspect the distributors won’t collate for cost reasons.

“contact a meaningful sample (10,000+) of the recipients (geographically and temporally spread), and verify that they received their orders”
Are you seriously suggesting that’s a valuable use of the charity’s time and resources?! :-O

I think that Jim was only saying that this is the only way to be able to be sure of the 200,000 figure being reported, not that the Foundation themselves should do it. Jim’s message is carefully worded to avoid accusing the Foundation of anything.

Jim, a sample size of 10,000 will give an error margin of 1%. You’re disputing the numbers by a factor of 20 in claiming that less than 10000 have been delivered compared to the foundations 200k estimate. A random sample of 10 of the first 200k orders would probably be enough, to disprove you – at 10k/200k (the most generous case for your analysis) you’d have a 5% chance of each being shipped so the probability of nobody having one would be 0.95^10 = 60%. The probability of finding two or more in the sample would be roughly 0.95^9*0.05 = 3%.

So a sensible suggestion from a competent person would be to make a random sample of 10 from the first 200k orders and see if they’ve been delivered. If you find more than two successes you’ve just proved that Jim is wrong at a 95% confidence interval. The fact that he thought that you’d need to sample 10,000 tells you all you need to know about the value of his analysis, or why professional auditors overcharge because they do 1000 times more work than necessary for the job.

An easier disproof for people who don’t like probability. The forums have two people with order numbers 651XX and 654XX ordered 31st May through RS delivered 17th July. They also have order numbers 571XX ordered 30th May delivered 11th July. That looks like compelling evidence to me that RS have shipped 65k or more PIs, they shipped at least 8000 in six days but people were ordering them much more quickly at that point. Doubling the numbers to account for Farnell and it’s looking fairly compelling that there’s 120k+ in the hands of end users.

Farnell has failed to give me any information on the pre-order I made.
I’m one of the people with only a ORP farnell reference number and no way to log on the site. (farnell also failed to answer when I asked in the special post on raspberrypi.org)
I’m really dubious about farnell, is the 4-6 weeks delivery another mockery ?

I gave up waiting for the Foundation sanctioned version and did precisely the same myself, EG: Ordered 2, gave one away to a local Scout group. Guess with more open orders now, nothing to stop anyone doing the same.

After VAT and shipping plus a 11 week delivery time I don’t see myself joining in this “revolution”. I anticipate a huge number of inexpensive but powerful ARM based dev boards to flood the market soon, if they haven’t already.

How will the Pi compete?

The failure I see is a failure to get enough Pi’s in the hands of the people who are actually doing the work, in a reasonable amount of time. Your FAQ specifically says that it was a “gamble” to produce a large number of units, well I think you’ve lost the gamble by not producing enough.

I appreciate all the work put into this project and it’s important to recognize the impact this project has had but I will be looking for alternatives for my projects.

After VAT and shipping plus a 11 week delivery time I don’t see myself joining in this “revolution”. I anticipate a huge number of inexpensive but powerful ARM based dev boards to flood the market soon, if they haven’t already.

How will the Pi compete?

I think if someone figures out a way to sell a mail-order board without charging VAT or shipping, we’re doomed :) Seriously though, we plan to compete by being cheaper and more powerful than the competition.

There are $70 devices on the chinese market, that has armv7 core, mali gpu, 512MB or 1GB ram, 4GB flash, wifi and of course case, cables and power adaptor. Free shipping. And its getting cheaper every month. Its better for multimedia applications, but it hasn’t got GPIO.

The Pi is aroud $55 (with shipping and vat) + cost of case, adaptor, sd card …. so you shoud harry getting out the cheaper “A” version of Pi :P

Anyway, I think the most important aspects of Pi is showing to the manufacturers that a lot of people would love to buy a small and relativly cheap device for playing and learning.

I do wonder where those guys make money – because once you get to that spec there is very little profit involved, just like the Pi – the Foundation could not survive if it wasn’t a charity and run by volunteers (free, rather than simply cheap as you may find in China)

I think you might want to do a bit of benchmarking before you claim that these Chinese devices are “better for multimedia”. All the ones we’ve seen so far use Mali 200 or single-core Mali400, which have roughly a quarter of the 3d throughput of Raspberry Pi.

Doing it without charging VAT is easy. They just operate from outside the EU and lie on the customs form. Loads of ebay sellers in china do this. They even admit they will be doing it in their ebay listing.

Shipping does have to be paid for but afaict you have lined up partners who are in the habbit of using fast but expensive shipping methods.

When trying to order more than one on farnell.com (for shipping in europe) I get the error:
There were errors in your submission, please correct them and try again.
Only one order may be placed per customer

MMmm, not convinced that opening the floodgates quite so wide as to let anyone order “as many as they want” is such a great idea, I can see alot of 3rd party retailers and ebay stores etc that will be buying up 100’s or even 1000’s of them and causing the same long delays.
Maybe a limit of 25 or 50 would of been better to allow projects like ours to get enough boards to roll out projects at schools and uni’s etc but to stop people abusing the system by buying up 100’s and reselling for 2 or 3 times the price on their own sites or through eBay.

There are still limits I believe – and since people will still be able to buy at the usual price from the website at decreasing lead times, there is no profit to be made by buying lots and reselling, as can be seen on Ebay right now where the resale price has reached equilibrium (ish)

Those who are still waiting for their first single Raspberry-Pi would have got it sooner if many folk hadn’t ordered two Raspberry-Pi’s, one from Farnell and one from RS-Online. Most of the owners I have spoken to got round the rationing to one Raspberry-Pi by this trick.

Just don’t buy from Farnell. I’ve — literally — never had a worse customer service experience than with Farnell. After placing my initial order with them on Day 1, I eventually got notified that my order would ship soon. After missing that date, I checked on my order and found that they had a problem with my credit card (most likely due to an overseas purchase), however they didn’t contact me. I tried to find a way to update the order with another card that doesn’t care about overseas orders, but their site provided no way to do that. I must’ve sent a half dozen emails, asking, begging for a way to fix that. I got nothing back. Finally, they contacted me and told me there was a CC problem. I replied. No response. I checked the site again, and used their contact form. No reply. I finally had it and told them to cancel my order. No response, and they didn’t cancel the order. WTF??

DAYS after that, I got a phone call from them on my voicemail, repeating the CC problem, and asking for me to fix it. I told them I gave up and canceled the order. I figured that was the end, but three days later, I got a call (which I was awake to receive) with a live person who restated the CC problem. I could not believe it! These guys are absolutely clueless. I was almost speechless.

Then, I calmed down and told them what I REALLY thought of their customer service.

I don’t know if this is the “norm” for companies in the UK or what, but it was a huge wake up call to me that there are companies out there (Farnell, in particular) who haven’t a CLUE how to handle customer service, and who really don’t care at all what their customers say.

I’m hesitant to try RS, but they’re the only other source left for a Pi. I just can’t get the bad taste out of my mouth yet. Farnell is the worst. Do NOT buy from them!

Something similar happened to my order on the 29th of Feb. from Farnell. I watched the status of the order via the order number. It went from “waiting for stock” (rough translation of the French) to “in progress”. It got stuck at “in progress” for a couple of weeks. Then I used the technical chat to ask for help, quoting the order number. They responded quickly and told me to phone a particular operator. I did so and she said that the credit card transaction had been denied. This may have happened due to the significant time lag between the original order and Farnell trying to charge the card. Anyway, I explained to her that the card should be okay and gave her the card details again. She punched them in and the charge went through. The Raspberry PI showed up some days later.

I registered ages ago in March and got to place my order some weeks ago. Still haven’t got it and now I hear that everyone can order without registration now. My estimated delivery isn’t even earlier than what element 14 states for new customers. I’m starting to wonder why I registered in the first place. I bet there will be some people who get their Pi, which they ordered today, faster than I will. And even if I get mine earlier, it will probably only be a few days looking at the shipping times. So the whole registration and early payment process was nothing but a hazzle afterall.

Really annoyed that I registered with RS in April, only got the chance to order end of June with a lead-time of approx 10 wks, then a couple of wks later, they go on open sale with Element 14/Allied saying lead-time 4 wks!!!

Based on this, I could still be waiting for my 1 Pi I tried to order in April, whilst people who order 100 today could be getting them weeks before me.

Please read the post again, they very clearly state “These orders will be serviced and delivered in the date order that they’re taken, and will not impact any deliveries already committed to other customers.”

and they say the 4 week estimate is valid “as our order backlog improves and our production capacity continues to increase.”

That’s great but I ordered through RS and it’s Parnell/Allied who are shipping in 4 wks. Read the comments below from people who’ve ordered them at about the same time or later than I have and are about to receive or already have received them.
Is it just that RS are rubbish compared to Allied/Parnell??

Just to provide a positive lean after reading through a comments section largely populated by people complaining about not having received their RPis.

I registered interest with RS on the 29th February (about 2 hours after the announcement as I forgot to set my alarm). I received my invite to order mid-May, and my RPi turned up in France on the 7th of June.

After chatting with my mum, we decided that an RPi might make a nice birthday present for my dad, so I registered interest with Farnell at the end of June, with no real optimism that it would be available before his birthday. Yesterday I received my shipping confirmation and in theory it should be with him by the weekend (where it will be hidden until his birthday!).

This will undoubtedly annoy those poor souls who’ve been waiting since the 29th for theirs, and it does seem to suggest that each company keeps national lists of interest meaning that there’s a separate queue for each country. This would explain the difference in waiting times that are being seen.

In any case, I’m happy with the service I’ve received from both companies. My first order of electronic components in about 10 years has been placed and I forsee many happy hours of hard and software hackery ahead of me. The interest that I’m seeing in the RPi outside of the forums matches the goal of the foundation to rekindle interest in development. All in all. Well done guys and nil carborundum illegitimi.

Well I ordered one from Farnell and one from RS on the first day they were available (the websites were both having so many problems I wasn’t sure if they actually got the message!).. I just never bothered to cancel the other order once the first got delivered…

A bit off-topic: On the RS purchase site I saw it’s possible to order also a case (for my pi I already received) and a power supply. I reallyl was going to proceed with the other until I saw the expectable delivery time would be 16 weeks(!). And I did not include a rasp pi on the package… Soo much time if true.

Word is out that Farnell customers which ordered after the registration process has been dropped already received Pi’s, while others are waiting since weeks or months. I guess the whole thing didn’t work out very well huh?

RS in Greece are a complete steal: they sell (including shipping) one single Pi for 70 euros, 2 Pi’s for 110 euros (that’s US$84 and US$132 respectively), because they ship from the UK, and they only ship via UPS.
This is not a distributor with international presence; this is a UK distributor helping UPS make a buck.

Well if you read the article in whole you can see that it remains a first come first serve fulfillment, if you feel as if your place in line has been bumped, then please contact the distributor directly. Telling the R-pi team is a lot like telling Sony that Wal-mart didn’t ship your TV.

So the Mod needs you to stand up for him?.
If he,s that unhappy he can delete the post, i doubt he needs your help.
I note they took the Payment fast enough. Odd how they can always sort that really fast.

Our mods don’t need me to stand up for them; occasionally, though, people like YOU need to be told who is in charge around here (clue: it’s not you), and reminded that we like the people who participate in this community to achieve a certain baseline of civility. On which note, meet the banhammer.

So I’ve been trying to purchase a Raspberry Pi (just like the rest of you), however I’m not sure which place I should use.

I’m in the US, so when I go to RS, it sends me to Allied. When I reach Allied, it says there are 0 RPi’s available!

When I head over to Element 14/Newark, I can fill out an order form and all, however they ask me for a Company Name and I do not own a company. I’m just another individual who wants to get his hands on a Raspberry Pi ASAP.

I put my name in the Company Name field and it lets me proceed. Now, however, it states they will conduct a credit check. Why is this needed?!

I don’t have credit, I just use the only debit card I own. Therefore, I’m afraid my ordered will be “delayed” and/or cancelled just because I don’t have credit.

Can anyone from Element 14/Newark or anyone else with previous experience respond to this and clarify some of my concerns?